Alright. I'm going to get a lot of smart-mouth comments for this, but here goes.
The training requirements for skills needs a rebalance. There are certain skills that really need to either be altered in how they're trained, or the requirements need to be decreased. It is unacceptable how much training needs to be done on some of these skills and some barely require much effort to train.
Now I know everyone's first response is going to be the totally original comment "What is this, your first MMO?" or something like that. But even MMOs need a balance. If skills are too tedious, no one is going to get them, and some of the skills take so long to level up, most people aren't going to do it when there are far more easier skillsets to level up. The main problem is that talents like Dual Guns, Ninja and the Crusador skills are completely unbalanced and require FAR too much grinding. Now, there are easy ways to grind these skills since you don't have to fight CP level monsters to do it, but it is completely ridiculous that you end up having to use a skill a specific subtle way almost 1000 times to rank a skill up one level. The biggest culprit are the Crusador skills that can ONLY be trained against Girgishiy in a party (But I won't go into that because I made an entire post about redoing the Crusador system.), and Divine Link is another one that is annoying to train (It's easy to train, just far too time consuming) Right now, there are a number of skills that need to be rebalanced in terms of training.
You want examples of good balance, then your best example is chain slash. One of the reasons all the new players flock to it (besides it being the most easy skill to use), is that it is also very easy to train. I liked the chain slash skill pacing for getting the skills (the ones you get after the chain slash storyline), and how balanced it was for grinding for the skills. At times it felt a little tedious at higher ranks, but nothing that couldn't be handled with a little patience, and sometimes a training potion to speed things up slightly. That is an example of a good training pace that you have the option of a training potion to speed things up, but it's not required to save you weeks of grinding. Other good examples are close combat and mage skills. Those skills are fairly easy to level up, and for the number of skills, that's good. I don't know how easy it is to level up archery, but if it's as easy as close combat, then it's fine too.
Now I know a lot of people's first reaction is going to be "Oh you just need to put time and effort into it." To that I say: Yes. But there needs to be a balance between what you work for and how long that takes. And some of the skills are too much of a pain to train as is. There's a reason why people rely on easy talents to learn. And the fact that some are unbalanced while others are balanced makes it even worse that some are so hard to obtain. I get that skills like Dual Guns and Ninja are usually for more advanced players, but there needs to be a limit to how much we're forced to grind. I have the AP to level all my ninja skills and Dual Gun skills to rank 1, but I just lack the time and energy to put into the ridiculous requirements the game wants of me.
The CP level training needs to be altered or removed (The ones that say defeat a "powerful" enemy for example). Because as people get to higher total levels, CP becomes a complete nightmare to manage and if a player needs a new skillset after mastering a skillset (Example: switching to Archery after mastering physical combat) to continue building their stats. Some of us are so strong that even with tendering potions and cp gear, it's still hard to find certain high level opponents to use certain skills on. The best we can do with some is go to kitchen dungeons where all the enemies are boss level. There are strategies for fixing this problem, but some of these CP level training requirements should probably be removed because of how tedious they can get for advanced players. I have noticed that CP training has slowly been becoming obsolete in the last few skillsets that have been released, and now there is more focus on using skills certain ways (AKA Spinning Slasher requiring to attack so many enemies at once) that are more skill based than just finding the right level enemy and it even helps players learn the skill more effectively as they learn to use the skills the way they're intended.
Alright... Now I know people are going to say: "But we have training pots for almost all skills now. Just go buy those." The fact that we need training pots at all shows the skill training is unbalanced. The training pots are just a bandaid for a much deeper problem. And some of us don't have the money to put into buying training pots to get around the tedious work cut out for us. Honestly, I'd have bought training pots to level up ninja, but I don't have enough gold to purchase from players, and not enough real money to buy stuff to make the training easier.
Comments
Personally I think it should be harder to rank skills so you don't have so many people with R1 everything walking around yet it's too late for that and there's a lot of crucial base stats locked behind weapon specific skills. I know I'd use skills like Smokescreen and Tumble a lot more if I didn't have to be locked to that weapon.
I'm sure Devcat is thinking of the training requirements and training to make it still feel earned while not making it impossible.
1. Devcat purposely made it harder to train skills that are combat power based later to encourage focused builds in a game where players can do anything. (post-Fighter update there's only been a few like Dance of Death and the Marionette summons)
2. They realize that certain skills like Windmill and Blacksmithing are hard to train so they implement the Destiny system which added 2x training EXP. (later changed to Talent system)
2. They realized the player base was getting stronger and implemented skill training requirements, by numbers rather than power level, but didn't want it too easy so they had to use high numbers to increase player training time yet chose to leave older skills alone.
3. They realized that some players dislike how hard it is to train these skills and other tedious skills like certain life skills so they implemented the Level 100~200 skill training bonus. (which makes players "work" for it)
4. I don't know if this is the case but I want to assume they realized how hard it is for life skill-only players to get to level 100 for the bonus skill training so they implement Homestead housing research which boosts life skill training.
So basically don't make the goal to max every skill out or you're going to be miserable yet you still have the option to do so but it's not supposed to be easy.
As I said, the fact that we need the extra help at all shows that the system is unbalanced.
Exactly. Most of these skills aren't hard to train, it's just too tedious to do so. Certain ones are okay, like Chain Slash is pretty well balanced in training. And I thought Mage and Close Combat were pretty well balanced, but others like ninja and gunner are nowhere near balanced.